Solo Devs on Planning: From Trello to Simpler, Effective Workflows

Navigating the world of project planning can be a challenge for solo developers. Juggling all aspects of product creation, from ideation to deployment, means finding a planning system that aids productivity without becoming a burden. This was the core of a recent Hacker News discussion where a solo developer, currently using Trello with a four-list setup (Planned, In Progress, Staging, Production), sought advice on improving their system, perhaps with progress percentages, and finding simple agile frameworks scalable for a small future team.

Interestingly, the responses leaned heavily towards simplifying rather than adding complexity.

The Case for Radical Simplicity

A strong theme emerging from the comments was the advice to "Don't complicate it." One commenter bluntly stated that formal systems like Trello (Kanban) can be "traps that waste time and effort unproductively," questioning why one wouldn't "eliminate it all and go immediately to development?" This perspective challenges the inherent overhead of any planning tool, advocating for a focus on flow and reducing work-in-progress to its absolute minimum—perhaps even eliminating visual cards altogether.

Customer-Driven and Interest-Led Development

Instead of elaborate planning, a recurring suggestion was to let customer feedback dictate development priorities. This doesn't mean customers directly assign tasks, but rather their input is filtered into features that benefit the whole product. When feedback is scarce, the advice is to work on what's personally interesting or what the developer intuits will be useful.

Key practices highlighted include:

• Dogfooding your own product: This provides a direct, invaluable feedback loop on what needs immediate attention.
• Flexible Backlogs: Using tools like GitHub Issues to track a backlog. However, the emphasis is on not being a slave to the backlog; tasks might sit there until genuine demand or interest makes them a priority.

Lightweight Tools and Techniques

For those who do use a system, the preference is for lightweight and integrated tools:

• TODO.md Files: A simple markdown file for tasks is a popular choice. One developer mentioned using a VSCode extension (coddx.coddx-alpha) to transform their TODO.md into a mini-Kanban board, treating it more like notes until the project matures.
• Paper Notes: The tactile, off-screen nature of paper notes was praised for its ability to avoid competing for screen real estate with IDEs, browsers, and other digital tools. This helps maintain focus.
• GitHub Issues: As mentioned, this is a common way to track potential work without requiring a separate, dedicated project management tool.

Balancing Structure and Agility for Solo Devs

The original poster's desire for features like progress percentages or scalable agile frameworks wasn't directly echoed. Instead, the community wisdom pointed towards principles that naturally align with agility: iterative development based on feedback, focusing on delivering value, and minimizing non-coding overhead. While GitHub Issues can scale to a small team, the discussion predominantly centered on optimizing for the solo developer's unique context, where excessive process can stifle momentum.

Ultimately, the consensus for solo developers seems to be: start simple, prioritize based on real needs (customer-driven or through dogfooding), and choose tools that integrate seamlessly into the development workflow rather than adding another layer of management.